Schiit Yggdrasil -- 21 bit?

Yeah, the publication industry and a good deal of the industry have become so oddly slanted, its become the true impediment to high fidelity.

One example, and this has vastly greater importance than this bit depth discussion, is the  idiotic effusive behavior of the publishing community in regards to high resolution recordings and the primary driver of why high bit depth digital converters are sold for.

Lets take a modern multi-track recording that might be released and adervertised as high resolution, but in truth hardly qualifies. I run analysis of the files and find a single instrument being recorded above the standard RB 16/44, with the remainder showing no a single aspect of a high resolution recording. So out of this entire multi-track production, in instrument or sample was in HiRes. It gets mixed together, with all  the other tracks going through and up sampling and sold as high resolution recording. At best, is RB+ or 16/44+. In every rag, each and every month, every reviewer should be checking and reporting and being critical about the state of recorded music. All this gear and too many piss poor recordings.

Also, today we do have gear that can exceed the modern Red Book recording. But keep in mind that the vast majority of speakers and amplifiers couldn't cope on 20 bit recording at scale. Some can do over 19 bits worth, but it won't be composed doing so. Amps and pre are also under this limitation.

Now as for that Benchmark DAC3 HGC review, those are some excellent bench test results. It seems that ESS had improved upon some of their filtering as well as some other tweaks being added. While I could pick on some level of improvements from lesser DAC devices my own, or even something like this, at this level the differences between other high performance devices that measure properly are hardly audible. An engineer can modify the final output to their preferences, but that's a designer coloration. But my hats to Benchmark, this is an engineering marvel!

Amusing to read various reviews on the DAC with most reviewers stating they couldn't discern a difference between it and other competitors at near or well above its cost. Big old surprise right there!  

@shadorne 

The ATC's can be highly dynamic, but go ahead and call ATC if you like, they publish the maximum SPL is 117db at 1m, and at typical listening distances will be around 110db or less. Also note, the distortion figures aren't provided but I would wager it has peak distortion levels of around 10%. This is not to say across the audio band, just simply the highest level of distortion at any point across the audio band. The vast majority of speakers produce this at 20-250hz, but many exhibit audible distortion at 95db average levels in the mid or treble ranges. There are very few speakers that can achieve this kind of dynamic range, but bass drivers are typically massive to keep distortion under control with mid and tweeters often being horn loaded or in an array configuration to withstand the load.

The ATC design will produce a notable amount of distortion in the bass if driven, but being a doped paper driver and our lack of sensitivity in that audible range makes it somewhat negligible. Doped paper, while not really capable or producing a rigid diaphragm, is quite good with internal dampening and generally makes the system work well. Its lightweight makes cone movements easier to achieve with a given motor assembly. Those soft domes used in the large dome mid and treble drivers also follow the same ethos. Light and well damped, which is pretty reliable approach.

@shadorne 

The specification in itself is honestly rather vague, which is another gripe the entire industry as measurements must be standardized to permit consumers to compare. Far too many brands take liberties with specifications. Sure, it could be set out to lessen consumer confusion when providing only what is deemed necessary, but when a specification is incomplete such as the one listed on ATC's own website, its best to leave it out instead. 

Rounding and truncation are similar, but with rounding being a broader function over truncation in this use. The idea behind rounding in the case of the Yiggy was that either method would increase quant noise, rounding would result a potentially less quant error and they decided it was low enough in level not to address it in by using a dithering filter. Adding dither would have added cost and complexity to the design and did so knowingly it would not measure in an ideal manner. In the test, it had shown that the rounded method used produced the exact result as truncating. No surprise in that part as rounding can produce the exact same figure. Rounding will in some cases, produce a slightly different result over truncation and have an very minor difference in quant error in comparison to truncation.

In large, this won't present much of an issue to most of recorded music. To the ones that it may have, will be quite low in level.

My best guess to the 21 bit question is the utilization of the DAC chips in a balanced pair per channel configuration. Not that in any way changes the chips ability to process the data, but possibly lowers its noise floor to a degree in which they decided to market it with that level of performance, but not purely technical aspect of capability.

From what I have read about the AD5791 in use, its an extremely linear performing R2R solution accomplished by using thin film resistor matching, then placed in pairs to provide its performance in a compact and simple to implement package. It also exhibits little drift in variable temperature ranges. Other R2R products that have been shown in the market are utilizing FPGA processors running code that corrects the linearity issues of ladder dac in use. So as long as the linearity drift remains within a range, they can identify the error and correct for it digitally before it reaches the next stage. Obviously a lot larger and may not be as stable as the AD5791 in stability.